


for what is right (is rarely easy)

by OverMyFreckledBody



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Laura Hale, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Dead Peter Hale, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Laura Hale Appreciation Week 2018, Laura Hale Feels, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-23
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2019-07-16 04:23:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16078334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OverMyFreckledBody/pseuds/OverMyFreckledBody
Summary: Laura isn't the one to die that night, but that doesn't mean that all her problems go away when the body falls.[Or, that first night/morning back in Beacon Hills.]





	for what is right (is rarely easy)

**Author's Note:**

> Laura & Derek canon feelings _hurt_ me so, but they're so healing to write.

                He answers the phone with a grunt and she pulls it away to quickly glance at the time. Ooh, it’s already pretty late here in California, so he was probably sleeping. She feels a bit guilty for waking him, but that’s quickly forgotten when she takes in a deep inhale and smells the iron-coppery scent of fresh blood.

 

                Looking down at her hands, she watches it drip off her fingernails where her claws used to be, and holds back a groan, rolling her head around on her neck. He must have heard something, or he’s waiting for a reason for being woken up, because he makes a questioning noise. She refocuses and asks, “I don’t suppose you’d know anything about burying a body, would you?”

 

                There’s a pause before Derek’s sighing over the line, and some shuffling as he obviously gets out of bed. “Booking a ticket now,” he tells her, and she listens to him get ready, grinning to herself in amusement at how he sounds unsurprised, mainly annoyed.

 

                At least, until he mutters something about how _she can’t do anything by herself_ , and she has to squawk back at him, astonished at his audacity to insinuate such things. He would be _lost_ without her.

 

* * *

 

 

                It’s later, in the motel shower, as she thinks over the day’s events that she realizes two things.

 

                The first being that Derek was actually asleep when she called, rather than staying up to worry like she expected him to. It _was_ around four when she called him, so maybe he had been trying to until he passed out. Her heart aches a little at the image in her head.

 

                She feels a little bad again, at causing him any reason to fear for the safety of his family again. It’s only worse when she thinks about _whose_ blood is swirling down the drain.

 

                Which brings her to her second realization:

 

                She’d only buried _one_ of the bodies.

 

                Goddamn it.

 

* * *

 

 

                They’re so careful to avoid the _cops_ that they end up almost getting caught by some damn _kid_. And not even _before_ he had the chance to see the body she’d accidentally left behind.

 

                This town is cursed, it has to be.

 

                Thankfully, he doesn’t see them, at least not very well. He gets spooked enough that he leaves pretty quickly after stupidly calling out a, “Hello?” But she and Derek had ducked behind some trees, out his sight, and listened to the sound of his receding footsteps before they’d carted off the body of Peter’s _nurse_.

 

                She didn’t get a burial, like Peter. And his was only because he was family. But both bodies were taken care of, thankfully. Now all they had to do was lay low enough to wait out the living.

 

* * *

 

 

                So, the plan was to leave the next morning after they attempted to get some actual sleep. Derek couldn’t, of course, so he suggested playing guard, claiming he’d fall asleep sometime on the drive back, from which they could take turns driving until they got back home. Which probably could have worked if it weren’t for the police banging on their door, right around seven in the morning.

 

                It turns out that upon trying to contact them about their missing (dead, not that they knew yet) uncle, only to learn from Laura’s snitch of a landlord, that they were gone, the both of them, and _someone else_ had left an anonymous tip that there was some “suspicious folk” around the motel.

 

                _This goddamn town_.

 

* * *

 

 

                _And we would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for that meddling nurse_ , Laura wants to say every time she opens her mouth in that small, uncomfortable questioning room. They really would have been out of there, without anybody’s knowledge, if she hadn’t forgotten the body long enough for it to be noticed. Which, yes, is Laura’s fault, but she can’t help the festering rage that begins to simmer within her. She hasn’t had enough time to give into the breakdown that’s just around the corner yet, hanging on for Derek, for both of them, but with everything building on each other, she was surely going to lose it.

 

                Thankfully, she’s able to get out of it with a story close enough to the truth. She claims that she’d been called in by Peter’s nurse, who had some updated news about Peter’s condition. Technically, that would be true, given the fact that he was suddenly able to walk around and _attempt to murder people_.

 

                But then she hadn’t visited yet, was going to, and the police got to her first. And as for Derek, he had some business to finish up first and took a plane when he could.

 

                And well, since they can’t find the nurse or her phone, they don’t have any proof that she did kill either of them, other than some circumstances she can explain away. They’re fine.

 

                Up until they’re _not_.

 

* * *

 

 

                “Stupid, _stupid_ kids,” she growls, glad that they’re alone so she can flick her claws in and out, can let her eyes flicker back and forth without worry. Well, without random civilian worry, anyway. She can smell Derek’s own pouring out all over the room. “Poking their noses all over where they shouldn’t be. What was that moron doing out in the woods anyway?”

 

                Derek says nothing, only watching her, which she can feel like heat on the side of her face that she ignores, continuing on, “You weren’t even that bad, you know, _before_.”

 

                His sour, sweaty scent of misery only puffs out at that, expands, doubling all over the room, and she cuts a glance to him. He’s hunched over, hands on his knees, staring at his feet. All her own anger and frustration melt away, quickly storing itself in the back of her mind to bother with later. This, Derek, was more important.

 

                “Hey, no,” she sheathes her claws and reaches out and takes his hand into her own. He shivers, his telltale sign that he’s about to start crying, and she immediately scooches in close, pulling his frame against her, cradling him, even if he was larger, taller than her now. “Derek, Derek. We’ll get through this. They have nothing but a dumbass kid’s eyewitness statement from the middle of the night. And that’s _if_ he even says anything about it. He didn’t look bright enough to take anything to the authorities either, you know.”

 

                Derek, still shaking, turns and buries his face into her neck, letting out fast, wet breaths that make her skin tingle. She rubs over his shoulder, pressing in to give him the comfort of both touch and her scent mingling into his own, settling and overpowering. His hand adjusts itself in her grip and he squeezes as he attempts to regain his breathing.

 

                “Alpha, beta, omega,” she starts, and squeezes his hand back. “Come on, Derek, say it with me here. Alpha, beta…”

 

                “Omega,” he finishes, and then begins to repeat the pattern to himself, hurriedly at first, before it starts to slow down as his heartrate evens out. “Alpha, beta, omega.”

 

                She lets out a deep breath of her own when he starts to calm down, and nods, more to herself than anything. “Yeah,” she soothes. “There you go. We’re here, we’re safe. We’ll get through this, whatever it takes. Even if I have to go hunt down that scrawny little kid and pull out his memories one by one.”

 

                Derek lets out a weak laugh, and she feels her own lips turn up at that, at him slowly getting better. She leans down and kisses the top of his head as he starts to rub his thumb over her knuckle. He nods back at her, his soft hair brushing, ticklish against her neck, his voice shaky when he replies, “Whatever it takes.”


End file.
